Almost every website needs a form. Whether it is for asking visitors to contact you, an online job application or an event registration.

Also, forms need to be secure, user-friendly and the data collected must be reachable for analyzing/responding easily.

Ajax Form Pro, a professional and downloadable PHP application, which was featured before, now has a new version with more features and they are giving away 3 Developer licenses ($67/each) and offering a 20% discount to WRD readers.

Joining the giveaway is so easy, details are mentioned at the bottom of this and here is more information about the app:

The application has an administration panel for creating a form with:

• any input types (including file uploads)
• settings like the text to be displayed (or redirection to any URL) after submission, if the contents of the form will be e-mailed to anyone..
• custom styling and layout
• captcha enabled or not

and allows us to integrate it into web pages either with the generated PHP code or via an iframe.

Form can be styled either with the settings provided or using a custom CSS for advanced/complete styling.

It is created with usability in mind; the validator is real-time, works as-you-type, forms degrade gracefully for users without JavaScript and an option exists for displaying them inside a lighbox (so you can provide a link to anything which will display the form without leaving the page).

To sum up, Ajax Form Pro is a so useful application not only for creating secure forms but also for keeping/reaching the data collected in a single, organized interface.

A discount for WRD Readers

Ajax Form Pro is offering a 20% discount to WRD readers with the coupon code AFPWRD (which is valid for the next 2 weeks).

Here are the shortcuts to the pages for using the coupon codes:

• Single License
• Developer License
• Extended License

How to join the giveaway?

In order to get a chance win one of the 3 Developer Licenses, simply comment to this post and winners will be selected randomly with the query below on 8 February 2012 (1 week later):

SELECT * FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_post_id=2779 AND comment_approved=1 AND comment_type='' GROUP BY comment_author_email ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 3

Good luck to everyone.

The winners

Here they are:

• Kunule (comment #506883)
• Leon (comment #506936)
• chromus (comment #506748)

Congratulations and thanks very much for joining.

InkyDeals is a daily deals website, shared previously at WRD, focused on offering design resources for much lower prices.

They are regularly featuring items like vectors, Photoshop actions, PSD templates, brushes and more.

They have packed a new and huge set of design resources named Winter Bundle which includes:

• 100 floral vectors
• 270+ vectors of fashion items and silhouettes
• 10 vector t-shirt designs
• Japanese art vectors
• Tillable paper textures pack for Photoshop
• 100 winter-themed vectors
• 100 spring-themed vectors
• 54 hand-drawn, colorful sugar skulls and 14 floral elements
• 30 vector trees
• 9 Heraldry Photoshop brush packs
• Photoshop actions for cinematic 3D effects
• A set of seamless floral patterns
• 100 valentine-themed vectors

The pack would originally be priced $500+ if items were purchased separately but offered for $29 as a bundle.

InkyDeals Winter Bundle's license is royalty-free, can be used over and over again and the pricing is valid until 24 Jan 2012.

There are many ways a website owner can choose to communicate with visitors: e-mail, contact forms, forums are the widely used ones.

ClickDesk is a live-help application that enables website owners to be in contact with visitors much tighter.

They are giving away 5*annual Lite Plans/1 agent ($120/each) to WRD readers and details of joining the giveaway can be found at the bottom of this post.

What is ClickDesk?

It is a hosted live chat system where visitors can see the online status of the website operator, choose to chat with them if online or leave a message to be contacted later if the operator is offline.

A very nice feature for customers looking for a more personal touch is the ability to make voice calls directly from the browser with a built-in browser-phone app.

ClickDesk also provides global access number in 40+ countries where they can reach you free of cost.

All these great functions (chat and VOIP) are integrated with your favorite IM application (Google Talk or Skype) which also make it possible to keep in contact with your visitors from mobile phones.

The chat can also be initiated automatically/proactively once you think the visitors needs a hand (on using your service, choosing the right pricing plan, etc.).

Once a chat is initiated, the application collects any useful information about the visitor (like chat history, browser and details, country..) that can empower the operator in helping the visitor.

Operators can chat with multiple users at the same time and/or choose to transfer chats to other operators.

Each ClickDesk account can have unlimited departments and the same account can be used in any number of domains.

It is a plug 'n' play service, just insert a few lines of JavaScript code to your website for activating the widget (whose design can be customized) and that's all. For Magento, OsCommerce, WordPress and Joomla users, plugins exist for an easier installation.

The application works as a social bar with the display of social services like Facebook or Twitter.

And, integrations exist for 3rd party services like SalesForce, Zoho, SugarCRM, Zendesk and WHMCS.

How to join the giveaway?

In order to get a chance to win one of the 5*annual Lite Plans/1 agent, you can do one (or both to increase the chances) of the following:

• tweet: "Just joined the @2desk ClickDesk giveaway at WebResourcesDepot – http://bit.ly/w3YQ5a" RT to join & win annual accounts #contest  (click to tweet quickly)
• comment to this post

Winners will be selected and announced on 23 Jan 2012 and good luck to all.

And the winners

Here are the lucky commenters for the giveaway

• Olivier (comment #497548)
• Livne (comment #497637)
• Kevin (comment #494805)
• @asacarter
• @uiliw

Congratulations to the winners and thanks to everyone for joining.

You might not now but recently the world's biggest logo marketplace Brandstack.com was acquired by DesignCrowd. It's since been relaunched as BrandCrowd, a marketplace for designers looking to sell any unused logos and for anyone hunting for a logo design.

The marketplace is offering a quality experience for both parties;

• only high-quality designs are accepted so buyers browse through a well-designed set of logos
• designers focus on creativity without being directed by a client brief

The process to sell logo designs is pretty straightforward, upload the designs with a short brief and they are ready to be purchased after the BrandCrowd team places them under the right categories so buyers can find them easily.

The user profile also function as a portfolio of items for sale where your designs are listed and the price you've set is displayed to the user. Sellers can receive offers from buyers who want to make an alternative offer to buy the design and/or request modifications to the existing design.

Listing items is completely free and BrandCrowd only gets a commission when there is a sale. After each sale, the company contacts buyers to verify the purchase, which means logos are protected.

If you want to buy logos, things are all good as well. Browse the logos, filter with keywords (for ex :check the design and creative services logos) and, if found a logo meeting your requirements, just pick the item and it is all yours (won't be resold to anyone). As the buyer gets the vector files, it is possible to easily apply updates on it.

Re-selling/Privacy

Interestingly, there is a feature available to buyers (such as web design agencies) to allow them to make a purchased logo hidden or private.

This is useful if you're looking to:

• re-sell that logo (potentially with a margin)
• just wanting to hide the logo for your own business so that people don't know where you got it from.

Conclusion

BrandCrowd (which used to be known as Brandstack) appears to now moving forward with a new name + energy.  Our take: it's a risk-free opportunity for unlocking the value of any used logo designs and a great place to buy a creative logo for yourself (or your clients).

Find my Font, a very useful desktop font identifier application, is giving away 5 Pro licenses ($69/each) to WRD readers.

Details on joining the giveaway can be found at the bottom of this post and here is what this tool offers:

What is Find my Font?

We sometimes see a beautiful logo and wonder which font is used to create it. Guessing and try-catches is the popular method for reaching to a result but it takes time and usually hard.

Find my Font is a desktop application (with Windows and Mac OS X versions) that can identify a font used in images and helps browsing your font library.

It works by selecting the letters in the image and asks us to type these letters and runs a quick scan within the fonts in our system (any number of font folders can be defined) to find the ones with the closest match.

The great thing is that the application doesn't only return a single result but also lists and orders the fonts according to their similarity score which is handy for finding alternatives.

Find my Font has an easy-to-use toolbox for taking screenshots, rotating images or selecting letters to make sure that the image to be analyzed is ready for a scan.

As mentioned previously, the application is also a font browser where you can type a text and quickly see how it looks. Also, the scan works during browsing fonts so that the alternatives to the system fonts (or their duplicates) can be instantly catched.

How to join the giveaway?

Find my Font is giving away 5 * Pro licenses and it is enough to comment for joining this giveaway -and let us know you favorite font in the comments which can help other commenters meet new lovely fonts – totally optional : )-.

Winners will be selected randomly with the query below on 13 Dec 2011 (a week later):

SELECT * FROM wp_comments WHERE comment_post_id=2602 AND comment_approved=1 AND comment_type='' GROUP BY comment_author_email ORDER BY RAND() LIMIT 5

Good luck to all.

And, the winners

The winners are selected and here they are:

• Aldo (comment #454823)
• Josh D. (comment #457922)
• NRL (comment #454441)
• Robert Barcus (comment #454262)
• Webster (comment #455313)

Congratulations..

A website toolbar is something that can beautify or uglify web pages depending on the solution used and how it is configured.

In order to improve the visibility of several things on WRD, last month, I have integrated, Skysa, a free-to-use (with paid plans) toolbar that can sit either in the header or footer of websites (check the footer>left of this page) and provides many features in a tiny space.

Skysa is loaded with many applications for social buttons, translating pages, content aggregating, announcements, polls, chat, games and more.

As the toolbar is highly-customizable, I have placed social buttons with the order I preferred, so readers would easily tweet, like or +1 WRD (and, it worked as expected, the amount of such social activities were much higher than the previous months).

And, with a minimalistic approach, only activated the social widgets, translate, "who is on" and scroll-to-top apps. Simply, the ones that will ease the way readers browse and use WRD.

The translate app is great, it remembers the choice of the reader and auto-translates any other pages that readers would visit. So as the "who is online". Besides an "online readers count", it displays them on a world map.

It is possible to track the usage on each application, how many times they are clicked, etc. and, from the statistics, I can easily tell that "they were actively used".

Skysa has an application gallery where you can browse, choose and activate quickly. Every app has its own customization options.

If you have a membership-based website, the app can integrate into that as well and use the profile info (name, photo, etc.) when needed.

For paid plans, it enables you to create custom applications, manage multiple toolbars and place ads inside it.

Also, worth mentioning, the color of everything inside the toolbar can be completely customized so that it will fit perfectly into any website.

Conclusion

The most exciting thing about a toolbar is its ability to "always staying inside the viewport". During this 1 month, Skysa proved me that it can help me use that space efficiently and it is a stable platform.

There is definitely a lot of room for improvement, new apps, more positioning options, etc. but Skysa is very solid at what it does. No problems faced during that month.

I can keep using the toolbar or not, but, if you in search of such a solution, I definitely suggest giving the application a try.

If you are out of business cards or just about to start your business, here is a giveaway that may reach your help.

UPrinting.com, the popular online printing company, is giving away die cut business cards to 5 WRD readers (250 pieces/each).

What is UPrinting?

It is a very easy-to-use service for getting anything printed; brochures, calendars, catalogs, envelopes, stickers, flyers, magnets, business cards, etc.

You can upload your own designs, use their web-based design app or make use of the templates offered.

There are many options for the papers to be used, sizes, corners and more so you can get exactly the print needed.

They offer a quick turnaround for every online printing job and have a 24 hour customer support that makes sure any questions you may have are answered.

Details of the business cards given away?

5 readers get the chance of winning 250 pieces of business cards each. Here are the details of the business cards:

• Sizes to choose from:
  • 2 x 3.5" Rounded Corners, 2×2" Rounded Corners, 1.75×3.5" Rounded Corners, 2×3.5" Leaf, 2×3.5
  • Rounded one corner, 2×3.5" Half Circle Side, 2×3.5" Oval, 2.5" Circle
• Paper to choose from:
  • 14pt Cardstock Gloss / Matte / High Gloss (UV), or 13pt Cardstock Uncoated

They come with 6 business days free shipping (including international winners).

Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, a post at WRD had announced the giveaway of "3 MONyog Ultimate Single Server with Premium Support" licenses ($399/each) and, today, the winners are selected + announced at the bottom of this post.

In case you missed that post, here is a short re-introduction of the product:

What is MONYog?

MONyog is a Windows and Linux compatible desktop application for easily seeing every detail about a MySQL server and fine tuning variables.

The application displays a nicely formatted "slow query log" for finding out the queries effecting the performance of your apps so you can improve them and check back again.

MONyog is not only a reporting tool but also an advisor. It analyzes the setup of a MySQL installation, tells the possible problems (including security issues) and how to make things better.

The variables like InnoDB cache, thread cache, table cache, index usage (how effective they are), the number of each statement (select, insert..) and many other sub-metrics can be tuned perfectly using the application.

It has a free trial and I definitely suggest you giving it a try.

The winners

Winners of the MONyog giveaway are:

• handrus(comment #420739)
• Erhan (comment #419635)
• TyShkan (comment #419360)

Congratulations and thanks very much for joining the giveaway.

Info: This is a review of a paid application.

AceProject, a powerful project management application which was previously shared at WRD, recently got better with a huge update. In case you missed our previous introduction, here is a good chance to know about this handy product.

First of all, it has a brand new look which makes working on projects and taking actions very easy. With the tabbed interface, dealing with multiple projects at the same time is possible (which is great for multitasking and comparing details).

The application handles all the steps of project management:

The core

Projects can be created and assigned to any number of users. And, same for the tasks.

Tasks can be grouped and different task types can be created to better cover the phases of a project and categorize them.

Each task can be marked with statuses ("Waiting", "In Progress" and "Completed") and priorities to see which things need to be done.

Document management

Users can upload documents, assign them to projects and other users can view these files in accordance with their access rights.

Such a repository saves time finding project-related documents, seeing their versions and viewing who accessed them.

Time tracking

For a company charging with hours or willing to see "how much time spent on each task/project", AceProject offers a built-in time-tracking module where users can define the hours worked for each task.

The process is either manually or automatically with the help of the IN/OUT time clock module.

Once time reports are ready, they need to be approved by the manager of the project (he/she can easily remove or edit the items).

Expense tracking

This is where users submit expenses for approval in a project or a task.

The feature is good for anyone who travel or purchase equipment and incur expenses that effect the total cost of a project or a task.

HR/Resource management

The application can control any number of users including employees, subcontractors, clients, telecommuters, etc under the same interface.

So, people involved in the project doesn't have to be the ones in your company/team but any others that you work from time-to-time or only for that project..

Statistics and reports

AceProject can report every detail in a project from different views like per project, task, user, client, time period, etc.

Simply, it eases finding out "what is going on at any time".

Mobile access

There is an intuitive mobile web interface that works in all major mobile browsers/devices and functions as a light version of AceProject.

So, wherever a project member is, they can still involve to the process.

Collaboration

An internal mailbox lets the users know about any notifications they received. And, it can be used to contact other team members.

Also, a built-in discussion forum enables share thoughts, ideas, issues, knowledge and lots more.

To sum up, this project planning software has all the features for controlling multiple projects, providing access to everyone involved and reporting the activities. All with a user-friendly interface.

Today, speed in web applications is one of the keys to success. It effects the interaction with users, their perception about the website and even how Google ranks websites.

And, database performance is one of the most important factors of speed, as, once there is a bottleneck in it, nothing will function fast.

During the development of Uptime Robot (and still), in order for the application to handle more requests in a shorter time, I needed to optimize 2 things:

• the queries used
• MySQL server itself

Yes, minimizing the number of queries, using indexes smartly or changing the well-known settings of MySQL server makes sense but measuring the results and finding out how each update effects the performance is the hardest thing to analyze.

This is when I started using MONyog, a desktop application (with Windows and Linux versions), that helps tracking everything about a MySQL server. And, most importantly, it comes with working advices at every point.

The application can connect to any number of MySQL servers which is great for working with the test and production server at the same time. And, it only requires the MySQL root login to collect data (nothing to install on MySQL servers).

Its dashboard welcomes you with the most important charts like the availability of the server, number of connections, cache misses, statements and any other metric can be added.

Besides the ability to viewing the process list, disk usage or events, there are 2 menus that saved me so much time:

• Monitors/Advisors
• Query Analyzer

Monitors/Advisors

The menu has multiple sub-menus where each of them helps fine-tuning the server so much.

You can get the number of "current connections" and how effectively they are used, InnoDB cache and logs performance, thread cache, table cache, index usage (how effective they are), the number of each statement (select, insert..) and many sub-metrics.

Each item is explained shortly yet clearly and advices are shown to make them better.

MONyog also scans the settings of the server, displays the values as a snapshot and warns you about any possible security issues (and how to fix them).

Query Analyzer

This is where you can find the popular "slow query log". But it comes with a better presentation (compared to a standard MySQL slow log query) that focuses on finding the issues.

The Query Analyzer is vital in locating the problematic queries and seeing how they perform after optimizing them live.

To sum up

I started using MONyog when I was just about to decide that everything was done for performance, the limit of the server was reached and a 2nd or a much powerful MySQL server was required as the resource usage was ~90% in average.

After the optimizations with the application, the same server responds to a bigger number of queries in a shorter time with lower than 50% of resource usage.

Simply, it saved me renting a new server and providing a better experience to Uptime Robot users. And, totally suggest it if you are managing a busy MySQL server.

The giveaway and how to join?

After my experience with MONyog, I contacted them with the idea of running a giveaway and they were kind enough to giveaway "3 MONyog Ultimate Single Server with Premium Support" licenses ($399/each) to WRD readers.

In order to join the giveaway:

• Share this giveaway with a tweet: "Just joined the MONyog  MySQL Monitor and Advisor giveaway at WebResourcesDepot – http://goo.gl/0O6Eg" (click to tweet easily)
• Follow @webyog Twitter user
• Share your tweet URL within the comments

The winners will be announced 1 week later (3 November 2011) and good luck.